Vending machines are widely used in various locations as automated means for selling items such as soft drinks, snacks, etc. Traditional vending machines are equipped with mechanical locks, which can be unlocked with a corresponding mechanical key to open the door of the machine to allow reloading of goods and collection of money.
One significant problem with conventional vending machines is the difficulties in managing the distribution and usage of the keys to ensure the security of the locks on the vending machines. The process of collecting money from the vending machines scattered at different places is a very manpower-intensive operation that requires many employees to go into the field with numerous mechanical keys for operating the locks on the vending machines. It requires a considerable amount of attention and efforts to manage and track the distribution of the keys to the field workers to keep the keys secure.
Moreover, the mechanical keys and lock cores of vending machines are a point of attack for vandals. The keys can be lost or copied easily, and the stolen or copied keys may then be used by an unauthorized person to access the machines, and it is difficult to discover such misuses and security breaches. Also, a skilled vandal can easily pick or drill-out the lock core tumblers and measure the key cuts of the lock core tumblers to re-produce a like key and compromise the security. In the event a security breach is identified, the mechanical lock cores of the affected vending machines typically have to be manually replaced, which is a time-consuming and very costly process. Furthermore, mechanical keys and locks are devices that cannot be partially limited in operation they operate indefinitely if in use. Also, they do not have the ability to record access operation attempts of their operation.